Midterms - Soros Conspiracies Go Mainstream

Whereas a few months ago, there was a first sighting of ‘Q’ both at Trump rallies and in the mainstream media (Comedy Central highlighted the movement at first in several of its shows before it was mentioned in the Washington Post and the New York Times), this election campaign has seen the Soros conspiracy theories go mainstream.

Even Mr. Robert Goldberg, a professor at the University of Utah and author of a book about the US conspiracy culture, admitted that conspiracy theories were being developed faster in the current age of social media: “I think this has really reached the mainstream. Conspiracy theories have become normal.”

The Hungarian-American billionaire, whose despised in his home country for his rivalry with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, emerged as a force on the political stage in the US back in 2004 when he tried to stop then-President George W Bush getting re-elected, stating that he was ‘bad for business.’

After spending $27m on the failed bid, he went on to supply Democrats with money.

A similar amount was invested in Hillary Clinton’s campaign of 2016. Rumor has it that in the current midterm election, he has spent far more than $10m already. One of his strongest backings has been for Mr. Beto O’Rourke in Texas, whom some see as a possible Democrat contender in 2020.

At the end of Mr. Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, a campaign ad said that Mr. Soros, together with then-Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein were the ones to control “the levers of power in Washington.”

Last month, Republican attack ads also started focusing on his personae.

Mr. Soros’s image appeared in a campaign advertisement in Minnesota, sitting behind several piles of cash stacked in a tower. “Billionaire George Soros bankrolls the resistance,” the narrator suggested in the ad, one of several Soros-related spots released in the state by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

And of course, Mr. Soros was the first of a dozen prominent Democratic donors and politicians to be targeted by the pipe bombs mailed by Florida conspiracy theorist Mr. César Sayoc, who mentioned his hatred for the leftwing billionaire multiple times on social media.

Ms. Laura Silber, the spokeswoman for the billionaire’s Open Society Foundation, admitted that conspiracies about Mr. Soros had always existed on the fringes, but ever since his fight with the Hungarian government and his arrival on the US political scene, those theories were taken to new levels.

“We have seen the borders of what is an acceptable move to the center,” she said.